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Fourteen

Corinne shut the door with a soft click , trying to ignore the way her chest squeezed every time Josef and Felix left her apartment.

She knew that what she ought to do was spin away and remove the evidence Felix always left of his visits—colored crayons scattered over tables and to wherever they rolled on the floor when he abandoned them to act out some scene from whatever story Grandpapa Josef had read to him the night before, small cups half-filled with water in every room, wooden blocks teetering in impossible towers.

What she wanted to do was stand here for another long minute, rest her head against the wood, and savor the feel of Felix’s little arms around her, hugging her close and bidding her farewell.

She’d never thought she was the most maternal of women.

For so long she’d been focused on her education, and then on attaining a professorship when the odds were stacked against her.

She’d dedicated so many years to fighting for the right to chase her dreams, knowing very well that she was sacrificing the chance for a home and family of her own.

Never before had she thought she’d minded.

When parishioners made prod after poke after pointed comment about how her best years were wasting away and if she didn’t get started soon, she’d never have a family, she’d shrugged it all off.

She had Maman. She had her friends, her colleagues, her students.

And since no man had ever made her heart pound the way Maman had described her own doing for Papa, Corinne had been content to say, Later. And if never, then so be it.

But she didn’t have Maman now. Most of her friends, colleagues, and students had left Paris, and the new ones to take their places weren’t exactly the same, even if they were precious.

And a man was making her heart pound, even when he wasn’t here.

Even when it was only his godfather and his son laughing with her in the autumn afternoon.

He didn’t have to be here—she saw him in Felix, and in Josef, and in the chair he always claimed.

She heard his voice in the lines of conversation he ought to have spoken, in the stories Josef told, in the love in Felix’s voice.

She wasn’t just falling in love with the German professor—she was falling in love with his son, and this was bound to end poorly.

“Ah well,” she said to the door. “Some of the best literature is tragedy, after all. That’s no reason not to experience the story.”

Her gaze fell to the small table she and Maman had always kept by the door, which was, at the moment, empty of post. She’d meant to get it on her way up after her last class of the day, but she’d spotted the Pirate Goldenhair and his laughing guardian bounding through the building’s front door as she approached so hadn’t paused to take the time.

Now, however, she grabbed the small brass key and hurried down to fetch it. She had plenty of time to sort the post and then clean up the whirlwind of chaos Felix always left in his wake.

Liana was supposed to be coming by tonight after her “poetry” meeting.

And while her friend knew that Corinne had been helping out with her “cousins,” even she didn’t know the truth.

No one did, other than the four of them.

And in Corinne’s mind, the best way to keep the secret was to make certain she left no details out to be seen in the first place.

The breeze that drifted in through the door in the foyer when Madame Dardenne entered smelled of turning leaves and coming frost. It made Corinne smile as much as her neighbor did. “Bonjour , ” she said in greeting, moving to the row of shining brass letter boxes.

Madame Dardenne smiled and moved to her own box. “ Bonjour , Corinne. Was that Felix I saw bobbing along with your cousin? Desirée will be sorry she missed him. She is still talking about their last game of pirate and island queen.”

Corinne chuckled, pushing aside the anxiety she and Josef and Christian had all shared when Felix and Desirée had finally been officially introduced three weeks ago.

At least once a week, the children played at Corinne’s flat now.

“It was, but his grandpapa still had a few things to get done and wanted to be home before dark.”

Madame Dardenne shivered. “I am not looking forward to the winter and its lack of daylight. It is terrifying enough, going through their checkpoints in the light of day, even when I know I have nothing verboten with me. But at night?” The woman paused, her eyes widening a fraction, and then she rushed on to say, “Not that I think the Nazi men would do anything untoward, of course—I would not want to go through a checkpoint of French soldiers after dark by myself either. It’s—”

“Madame.” Corinne reached over and rested her fingers on her neighbor’s arm, giving her a comforting smile.

“We are all uneasy passing through checkpoints. And no woman is likely to feel quite as safe as she once did walking the streets of Paris after dark, with the shift in our residents. As you say, we would feel no more secure if it were French soldiers teeming. Too many men in one place can lead to bad things, we all know that. They need our feminine influence to keep them gentle.”

Her neighbor chuckled, though she didn’t relax much.

Corinne couldn’t blame her. This was the way of things now, and she was as guilty of it as anyone else.

You never knew what neighbor might decide to report you for something.

What friend actually thought as you did and which ones had decided that they didn’t care what regime ruled over them, they just wanted to go on living their lives as best they could.

No one could speak their mind these days.

They each pulled their post from their boxes in silence, then both turned to the stairs.

Once upon a time, the silence either would have been comfortable or easily broken by meaningless, peaceful chatter—who saw who at the bakery, what Desirée had said that had them laughing, a ridiculous line in a student’s essay.

These days, the silence stretched tight, and Corinne had no idea how to break it without it snapping around and lashing her face.

Somehow, mines had infested her life. One wrong step, and it could all come shattering down around her.

She paused at her own door, a bit surprised when Madame Dardenne did too.

“Corinne,” she said softly, slowly, a furrow in her brows.

“I know you’ve said repeatedly that I oughtn’t to worry—about that officer from the library next door, I mean.

But...I saw the way he looked at you last week, when you arrived home and found him waiting at your door.

Say what you will, his interest isn’t just in books. ”

Juste ciel. Good thing she had years of practice controlling the instinct to blush—she’d had to learn it to excel in the patriarchal world of academia, and it served her well now too.

She tamped down the instinct to demand, “How was he looking at me?” and instead huffed.

“I shouldn’t be surprised—it’s difficult to keep a man focused on what I have to say at the best of times.

All my mother’s fault for passing along these curls. ”

Her neighbor chuckled, easing onward a step. “And the lips, and the eyes, and the figure—but I am serious, Corinne. Perhaps books are his excuse, but they are not all he thinks about when he’s with you.”

No—he thought of Felix and Josef and the tightrope on which they were all walking.

Corinne sent her a smile. “Not to sound arrogant, my friend—but I have plenty of practice with such things. I know how to keep him on the other side of the room. And given that plenty of our conversations have been about his wife, Ilse, it is always easy enough to steer him back that direction. He may be a Nazi, but he isn’t without some morals, praise be to God. ”

Madame Dardenne chuckled and half turned away, toward her own door. “Good. But even so...I heard too many stories of too many men in past wars who missed their wives so much they sought comfort elsewhere.”

“Well, lucky for us all, I’ve never been accused of being a bastion of comfort.”

They chuckled together, and the jest did its job. Some of the tension eased, and they each opened their doors and said a friendly farewell.

Corinne wasted no time in throwing the bolt and sliding the chain once she was inside. There was a book in her post. She dropped everything else onto the table and tore into the brown paper wrapping it.

The Count of Monte Cristo , which meant Rosette in Pas-de-Calais—the informant Oncle Georges was most interested in hearing from, given the German presence in the coastal region near the English Channel.

This was the third book she’d sent back to Corinne, and its margins were burgeoning with secrets.

After pulling forward the dictionary they used as a key, she quickly decoded the seeming gibberish, turning it into information on Luftwaffe movements and conversations she’d overheard at her family’s café while pretending she didn’t know a word of German.

As she scrawled the last of it out and reread it, Corinne’s stomach twisted.

It had been bad enough, knowing in advance that the blitzkrieg of England would start when there was nothing she could do to stop it, when the warning Oncle Georges sent to London had been met with an assurance that it was expected, that they were as prepared as they could be.

That children had been evacuated to the country and the Royal Air Force was poised to defend England’s skies.

Still Corinne had glued herself to the radio every possible moment, the BBC turned down low so she could hear the reports of both the French and English broadcasters, painting a picture in words for her of a bombed-but-not-broken London.